**Note: These prices listed on the AMD Radeon R9 series of cards are MSRP. As of this writing it is pretty much impossible to find any of them AT THAT PRICE and instead they are either out of stock or $50-200 over the expected level. We had a discussion as to the potential source of the problem being Litecoin mining if you want to check that out.

What you should be watching for

ASUS MARS 760 vs GTX 780 Ti - How does the dual GPU power of the MARS 760 compare to the current king of the single card mountain, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti? Keep in mind that the 780 Ti is $700 while the MARS 760 is going to MSRP for $630.

ASUS MARS 760 vs GTX 780 - The GTX 780 is actually selling for $499, a full $130 less than the MARS 760. Can this customer ASUS card justify that price delta?

ASUS MARS 760 vs R9 290X - Now we'll kick the ASUS MARS 760 off against the top end solution from AMD in the single GPU department. If you ask me about the Radeon HD 7990 I will challenge you to find one for sale...

While there are literally dozens of file created for each “run” of benchmarks, there are several resulting graphs that FCAT produces, as well as several more that we are generating with additional code of our own.

While the graphs above are produced by the default version of the scripts from NVIDIA, I have modified and added to them in a few ways to produce additional data for our readers. The first file shows a sub-set of the data from the RUN file above, the average frame rate over time as defined by FRAPS, though we are combining all of the GPUs we are comparing into a single graph. This will basically emulate the data we have been showing you for the past several years.

The PCPER Observed FPS File

This graph takes a different subset of data points and plots them similarly to the FRAPS file above, but this time we are look at the “observed” average frame rates, shown previously as the blue bars in the RUN file above. This takes out the dropped and runts frames, giving you the performance metrics that actually matter – how many frames are being shown to the gamer to improve the animation sequences.

As you’ll see in our full results on the coming pages, seeing a big difference between the FRAPS FPS graphic and the Observed FPS will indicate cases where it is likely the gamer is not getting the full benefit of the hardware investment in their PC.

The PLOT File

The primary file that is generated from the extracted data is a plot of calculated frame times including runts. The numbers here represent the amount of time that frames appear on the screen for the user, a “thinner” line across the time span represents frame times that are consistent and thus should produce the smoothest animation to the gamer. A “wider” line or one with a lot of peaks and valleys indicates a lot more variance and is likely caused by a lot of runts being displayed.

The RUN File

While the two graphs above show combined results for a set of cards being compared, the RUN file will show you the results from a single card on that particular result. It is in this graph that you can see interesting data about runts, drops, average frame rate and the actual frame rate of your gaming experience.

For tests that show no runts or drops, the data is pretty clean. This is the standard frame rate per second over a span of time graph that has become the standard for performance evaluation on graphics cards.

A test that does have runts and drops will look much different. The black bar labeled FRAPS indicates the average frame rate over time that traditional testing would show if you counted the drops and runts in the equation – as FRAPS FPS measurement does. Any area in red is a dropped frame – the wider the amount of red you see, the more colored bars from our overlay were missing in the captured video file, indicating the gamer never saw those frames in any form.

The wide yellow area is the representation of runts, the thin bands of color in our captured video, that we have determined do not add to the animation of the image on the screen. The larger the area of yellow the more often those runts are appearing.

Finally, the blue line is the measured FPS over each second after removing the runts and drops. We are going to be calling this metric the “observed frame rate” as it measures the actual speed of the animation that the gamer experiences.

The PERcentile File

Scott introduced the idea of frame time percentiles months ago but now that we have some different data using direct capture as opposed to FRAPS, the results might be even more telling. In this case, FCAT is showing percentiles not by frame time but instead by instantaneous FPS. This will tell you the minimum frame rate that will appear on the screen at any given percent of time during our benchmark run. The 50th percentile should be very close to the average total frame rate of the benchmark but as we creep closer to the 100% we see how the frame rate will be affected.

The closer this line is to being perfectly flat the better as that would mean we are running at a constant frame rate the entire time. A steep decline on the right hand side tells us that frame times are varying more and more frequently and might indicate potential stutter in the animation.

The PCPER Frame Time Variance File

Of all the data we are presenting, this is probably the one that needs the most discussion. In an attempt to create a new metric for gaming and graphics performance, I wanted to try to find a way to define stutter based on the data sets we had collected. As I mentioned earlier, we can define a single stutter as a variance level between t_game and t_display. This variance can be introduced in t_game, t_display, or on both levels. Since we can currently only reliably test the t_display rate, how can we create a definition of stutter that makes sense and that can be applied across multiple games and platforms?

We define a single frame variance as the difference between the current frame time and the previous frame time – how consistent the two frames presented to the gamer. However, as I found in my testing plotting the value of this frame variance is nearly a perfect match to the data presented by the minimum FPS (PER) file created by FCAT. To be more specific, stutter is only perceived when there is a break from the previous animation frame rates.

Our current running theory for a stutter evaluation is this: find the current frame time variance by comparing the current frame time to the running average of the frame times of the previous 20 frames. Then, by sorting these frame times and plotting them in a percentile form we can get an interesting look at potential stutter. Comparing the frame times to a running average rather than just to the previous frame should prevent potential problems from legitimate performance peaks or valleys found when moving from a highly compute intensive scene to a lower one.

While we are still trying to figure out if this is the best way to visualize stutter in a game, we have seen enough evidence in our game play testing and by comparing the above graphic to other data generated through our Frame rating system to be reasonably confident in our assertions. So much in fact that I am going to going this data the PCPER ISU, which beer fans will appreciate the acronym of International Stutter Units.

To compare these results you want to see a line that is as close the 0ms mark as possible indicating very little frame rate variance when compared to a running average of previous frames. There will be some inevitable incline as we reach the 90+ percentile but that is expected with any game play sequence that varies from scene to scene. What we do not want to see is a sharper line up that would indicate higher frame variance (ISU) and could be an indication that the game sees microstuttering and hitching problems.

I have to say that as impressive as this card seems, the only value it has is in it's compact design. You are paying for it's size, not it's capabilities. For around $600, (a bit more though) you can get 2 GTX760 with 4Gb memory each and put the bacplates on yourself. Remember, the memory on SLI setups doesn't stack so the Mars doesn't actually have 4Gb of effective memory. I had 2 4Gb 760s in SLI for around the price this card sells for and was very impressed as they outperformed the 780! Now that you can get a 780 for around $500 and a 780TI for around $700, why would you want the middle? Save a couple hundred with the 780 and have great gameplay or toss a couple hundred more out there for the TI and beat a Titian's back side!

MadeLoveToByASUS is my screen name on the PCPER Podcast because I've never been "F*CKED" by ASUS. They always amaze me with the quality and performance of their products. ASUS is the best in my book and will remain there as long as they continue the path they're on. Love the card, but I have 2 ASUS 780ti's via SLI in my system and it rules all I've ever had. Keep it up ASUS and PC PER. You are both the best.

my guess is that Asus didn't know Nvidia was going to release the 780ti...and they already had this card in the pipeline. If the 780ti didn't exist, this would be a sweet card.
Too late, Asus...good luck selling these things.

cool card but... 2 760 are not worth that much, if would be a perfect card if it used the full gk104 (770)... also 2GB per 760 is not so great considering the level of performance it can achieve without the vram being a bottleneck...

so yes... 2x 760s if you have a MB with enough space is a much nicer deal.

Hi PCPER thanks for the review... I am wondering how 2 of these cards would work in quad SLI. I haven't seen any benchmark numbers anywhere yet... Plus I haven't seen any available yet to buy? Any ideas when or where to buy them?